The Heart Has Its Reasons
by sinemoras09
Summary: A courtship. Ginoza/Akane. Post-series.


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His crime coefficient is 224.

There are new Enforcers in Division 1. Other than Yayoi - and Karanomori, although she works with all divisions and so doesn't really count - he is the only survivor of the original team.

It doesn't bother Ginoza much. The doors slide open and the cage is unlocked, and he and the other hounds rush forward, sniffing and hunting for blood.

xXx

.

Tsunemori, for some reason, is kind to him.

"I told you," Tsunemori says (even though in his head it's _Tsunemori-taichou_, Inspector Tsunemori, as her official title decrees), "I told you, call me 'Akane.'"

"Why would I do that?" Ginoza says. "You are an inspector and I am an enforcer. You have a higher rank than me."

"You were my senpai just a few months ago, and anyway, I thought by now we could be friends."

She is shoving her chopsticks into a cup of instant ramen. Ginoza watches, frowning a little as Tsunemori unceremoniously slurps up the ramen with rather un-ladylike gusto.

"Friends?" Ginoza says. Tsunemori nods.

"You don't socialize with the other enforcers, do you?"

"I don't see how that is any of your business," Ginoza says. He starts to leave when Tsunemori catches him by the arm.

"Ginoza-san."

He stops, startled. She looks up at him, pleadingly.

"Ginoza-san, I'm worried about you."

Her grip is warm beneath the fabric of his shirt.

His left arm, cybernetic, pushes her hand away.

xXx

.

Once, he had a conversation with his father. One that was uncomfortable and altogether too familiar.

They were sitting on the roof of the Bureau. Latent criminals cannot leave the compound, and so rarely get to spend the day outside. On the rooftop, however, they are technically still in the compound, and so Kagari and Yayoi and sometimes even Kougami ate lunch up there, under the blue sky and white clouds and warm, white sun falling on top of them.

Now Ginoza was sitting with his father, a hound, watching as he ate his sandwich, chewing thoughtfully and speaking without a care in the world:

"Akane-chan is a sweet girl. I think she would be good for you."

"What are you thinking, old man?" Ginoza said. His father grinned, then stretched, before unwrapping a piece of chocolate candy in front of him.

"You are getting old, Nobu-kun," his father said. He offered Ginoza a piece of chocolate. Ginoza glared at him. His father smiled, sadly. "Your work is not your life," his father said. "You need to get out! Make friends. Find a girlfriend. Make something of your life. Take it from a washed up old man."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Ginoza said, but he took a piece of chocolate, petulantly.

A few days later, the Bureau psychiatrist warned him his Psycho Pass was cloudy, didn't he have friends or family or a girlfriend to confide in?

And Ginoza said nothing, staring at the papers in his hands.

xXx

.

"I used to be bullied when I was growing up," Tsunemori says.

Ginoza is following her to the grocery store. Which, ordinarily, would be a task she could do herself, but she seems to know that Ginoza is feeling grouchy and lonely and so had offered to take him out herself. Now they're walking down the grocery aisle, staring at the myriad of brightly colored boxes of cereal and canned goods, while Ginoza follows her, silently. "Why?" Ginoza says. Tsunemori shrugs.

"All the kids used to make fun of me because of my Psycho Pass. They thought if they pushed me around, maybe they would get my hue to cloud over. It never happened, though."

She is examining eggplants. She is turning them over in her hands the way a sapper would defuse a bomb, and it's only when she runs one cautious finger along the swollen tip that Ginoza reddens and has to check himself, reflexively reaching to push up a pair of glasses that he's no longer wearing, and the gesture is so stupid and abrupt that even someone as dense as Tsunemori catches it.

"Is everything okay?" Tsunemori says. Ginoza glares.

"Of course it is," Ginoza says, and he grudgingly accepts the basket of vegetables and sets it in his cart, anyway.

They don't say anything. Ginoza pushes the cart while Tsunemori walks in front of him, the yellow fabric of her civilian skirt swishing slightly with her movements. Until now he hasn't even noticed, but she is wearing civilian clothing, a loose yellow skirt and blouse with a ribbon behind it, and that old part of himself wants to chastise her for being too friendly with the hounds.

"Your conduct is unprofessional," Ginoza says. Tsunemori glances behind her.

"How so?" Tsunemori says.

"You are not in standard dress," Ginoza says. "As Lead Inspector of Division 1, your duty is to supervise me and make sure I do not run off."

"Are you planning to run off, Ginoza-san?"

"Of course not," Ginoza says. "But that doesn't mean you shouldn't be prepared, anyway."

"_Hai, hai_, Ginoza Nobuchika-san."

She is making fun of him. Ginoza tries to glare but Tsunemori just laughs at him, touching him on the arm.

She pays for her groceries. Ginoza watches, feeling somehow content and relaxed as he helps her carry the paper bags into the car, opening the door for her and watching her slide into the driver's seat.

It's only after a few minutes of silence, after they've driven down a few miles through the lightless stretch of road leading back into the city, that Tsunemori looks out into the slanted glass and says, "I wish you would call me 'Akane.'

All the rest of my friends do."

Ginoza says nothing. He looks out into the darkness, past the fleeting shapes of buildings and cars and streetlights outside his window.

xXx

.

Like Akane, Ginoza used to be bullied growing up. He remembers it clearly: how he cowered under the bars of the jungle gym, curled up on his side and eyes squeezed tight as the older kids kicked him, grabbed at his arms and legs and pushed him. Their crime coefficients never rose, and neither did his, and while his Psycho Pass fluctuated from navy blue to cloudy brown he always somehow managed to bring it back to normal.

Adolescence was a godsend, and while the other boys his age made cow eyes over naked girls, Ginoza managed to slip by them, unnoticed.

Kougami was the closet thing Ginoza had to having a friend, and in the end even Kougami betrayed him.

xXx

.

His crime coefficient is 224, but the hue to his Psycho Pass is surprisingly clear.

He has made her ramen. Not the cheap store-bought stuff Tsunemori eats from the convenience store, but something homemade, the way he's seen his mother make it when he was growing up. He watches, throat tight, while Tsunemori sniffs suspiciously, then takes a bite. Her face brightens.

"It's good!" Tsunemori says. Ginoza smiles.

Increasingly, they spend time together off-duty, Ginoza following her suspiciously while Tsunemori chats and waves to her friends and family. He meets her friends and suffers through her ham-fisted attempts to set him up ("Ginoza-san! This is my friend Sakura! Isn't she as pretty as I mentioned?"), but for the most part, he enjoys her company. Tsunemori, on the other hand, seems to regard him as her latest pet project, rehabilitating him as if she were his personal Psycho Therapy.

"Let me see your face," Akane says (because she complained to him enough times that he's forced to call her by her given name, despite the impropriety and unprofessional conduct of it all).

"What?" Ginoza says, but Akane's already grabbed his face with her hands, pulling her to his height.

"You need a haircut," Akane says. "Your bangs are falling over your eyes."

"My hair is fine," Ginoza says, and he reddens when he realizes just how close their faces are. "Akane-san. What are you doing?"

"Nothing," Akane says, and she brushes back his hair from his eyes.

Later, she confesses to him that he has nice eyes, he shouldn't hide them.

The next time he sees her, he self-consciously brushes his bangs back, glaring awkwardly.

"What?" Ginoza all but spits out, but Akane just grabs his hand and smiles.

xXx

.

"I wonder," Akane says one day.

"I wonder how Kougami is doing?"

Ginoza stops. They were sharing a meal on the rooftop of the Bureau, Akane sneaking in a plate of steamed dumplings which Ginoza had accepted, gratefully. But now her chopsticks are poised, mid-thought, and Ginoza can feel the shift in the air. His eyes narrow.

"How do you know that Kougami is alive?" Ginoza says.

The question hurts her. He stabs at a dumpling viciously, taking one harsh bite before swallowing, hard. Akane blinks, composing herself.

"We have no evidence to the contrary," Akane says. "I like to think it's a matter of faith."

"It's a matter of stupidity. That's what I think," Ginoza says. "Why do you care about him? He was just an enforcer dog. And yet you let yourself become infatuated with him." Akane's eyes widen.

But Ginoza leaves swiftly, slamming the door.

xXx

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His crime coefficient is 224. His Psycho Pass is clouding, rapidly.

He had always cared about her, his stupid little partner, wide-eyed and naive. She had baffled him and she infuriated him, but in the end, she was always better than him. Didn't fall into the trap that he found himself, didn't sink into the darkness and despair.

xXx

.

He's trying to sleep in his quarters when he hears a knock at the door.

"Ginoza-san? Am I disturbing you?"

In the darkness, he can just make out Akane's form just outside the doorway. Ginoza sits up.

"Tsunemori-san?"

"Can we talk?"

The clock on the wall says 2 AM.

"Fine," Ginoza says, and Akane unlocks the door.

xXx

.

It's cold on the rooftop at night, and Ginoza only has on his shirt and pajama bottoms, completely at odds with Akane, who is in full official dress with her button-up shirt and black suit. The power disparity is unfair, and Ginoza feels somehow naked in front of her, with nothing to shield him except the ice cold glare he lets her see, narrowing his eyes with purpose.

"What do you want?" Ginoza says.

Akane yelps, then hugs her arms, the wind whipping her hair, violently.

"I wanted to apologize," Akane says. She has to speak loudly over the wind, which is rising in harsh gusts around them. "Whatever I did to offend you...Ginoza-san...I wanted to apologize."

"Why do you care?" Ginoza says. "I'm an Enforcer and a hound. You're my shephard. You are superior to me."

"That's not true!" Akane says.

"It is!" Ginoza says. "And every day, you remind me of what I've lost. How can there be friendship when one is solely to prop up the ego of the other? I have nothing," Ginoza says. "All I have left is my dignity as a man. And you'd even strip that away, with your good intentions and your pity.

I am not Kougami," Ginoza says, and Akane starts to cry.

He hates himself. He made her cry on purpose. He feels his Psycho Pass going from cloudy to opaque, and he's pretty sure if a Dominator were to focus on him now, his crime coefficient would be well past 300. He tightens his jaw, hands gripping into fists, while Akane cries and sniffs, pathetically.

"I'm...sorry..." Akane's words are choked between sobs. "I didn't mean to make you feel that way. I am a horrible person. Please forgive me."

Her eyes are swollen and her nose is red, and suddenly, Ginoza feels ashamed.

"Akane-san," Ginoza says, and he pushes back that hopeless, helpless feeling that's gnawing at the pit of his stomach. "Akane-san, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have...I shouldn't have made you cry..."

And then he hugs her. She clings to him pathetically, and he hates himself even more for taking a measure of comfort in this moment, at how perfectly she feels pressed against his chest. Then quietly, so softly even he can barely hear it, he confesses, "I was jealous," and he feels Akane shift and look up at him, wonderingly.

"You've always loved Kougami," Ginoza says. A shadow falls over his eyes. " I know I can never measure up to him. I don't think I could even try."

"Ginoza-san."

"Nobuchika," Ginoza says. "You let me use your given name. I think I should extend you the same courtesy."

"Nobuchika...san." She rolls his name around her tongue like a marble, and it's only then that he realizes he's still holding her. That she hasn't pulled away.

"Akane-san."

"Nobuchika-kun."

He's still holding her. His hands are around her waist, and her body is pressed tight against him.

The kiss is almost an after-thought: her face tilted upwards, the barest brush of his lips against hers.

Akane blushes. Ginoza smiles.

They stumble into her bedroom. What follows is the embarrassing case of the blind leading the blind, because before that night, Ginoza had not so much as even kissed a girl, let alone grope her awkwardly and fumble for her bra clasp; Akane for the most part takes to this as she does with everything else: with unwavering and boundless enthusiasm.

("I'm fairly sure this sort of thing is illegal," Ginoza says, but Akane says, "Look at my crime coefficient," and she reaches one slender arm across his chest to tug at the Dominator she had left unholstered on the nightstand. Ginoza frowns then blushes then rolls his eyes when she points the gun at herself, the tops of her breasts peeking from beneath the bedsheets, when the Dominator announces crisply that Tsunemori Akane's Crime Coefficient is 12, a ridiculously low number, despite the fact that Akane is technically abusing her position as a superior officer.)

xXx

.

He sleeps in her apartment, because an inspector hanging around the enforcer quarters would be suspect, but also because they have a modicum of privacy, unlike the shared spaces of his tiny room.

Surprisingly, no one seems to care much about their relationship, certainly not Yayoi or Shion, and even Akane's new partner doesn't give it much thought. "He was your superior. Now he's your subordinate. That seems to even things out, in my book."

And if his father were alive, he would likely grin and clap him around the shoulders, happy that his awkward wayward son would bring home a sweet girl like ojouchan.

But Ginoza tries not to think about this too much, because he gets a lump in his throat and a tightness to his chest, because a few short months ago his father was still alive, and wordlessly Akane would step beside him and take his hand.

xXx

.

Akane is endlessly, effortlessly, patient with him. At the end of a particularly grueling day, he would sit next to her on the couch or lean into her shoulder for warmth. At night, he would sleep with his face tucked into the crook of her shoulder, feeling the roiling tension of his emotions simmer into a quiet lull. His Crime Coefficient is 110. No longer in danger of Lethal Enforcement, but still high nonetheless.

He is ten points away from complete rehabilitation.

The psychiatrists at the Bureau are surprised. "You've been managing your hue quite well, Ginoza-san. Have you been trying new meditation techniques?"

"Not really," Ginoza says, but it doesn't surprise him.

A lifetime of social isolation. He never knew that he felt lonely, not until he knew what it was like to have someone to come home to.

end.


End file.
